Task 3a: The Networked Professional

Before starting the BA (Hons) course my knowledge of the different ways of communication were extremely brief, the most advanced I dared to explore were emails and facebook and they was scary enough. I feel my lack of knowledge and not seeing the benefits of the tools available kept me quite shaded to a whole new world of fantastic marketing professional /business opportunities. I wasn’t arrogant to the point of not wanting to learn as I am rather inquisitive, but knew it would be time consuming and I had heard so many different stories about people hacking personal information and found some information published could be quite detrimental to my career I decided to steer away.

After starting the course I have been using facebook in a different way not for my personal networking but for my dance school I use this for students to see what’s going on, school achievements activities photos. All photos that are put on facebook are with written consent from parents or a guardian. I have found facebook to be a great marketing tool for my business to advertise a current event for example shows and trips. Facebook is also a lovely way for new students with less confident to get to know each other, which helps students to bond and feel settled in the dance school. For me using facebook on a professional level has not yet had any drawback, so to keep on the safe side I will remain optimistic.

I have really enjoyed using my blog although I haven’t used it enough this term but plan to in the future. Living in Stoke-on-Trent we have a stream of teachers, I am able to approach them with questions regarding students, syllabus questions or for advice, they have always been either a phone call or a simple drive away. This is all well and good but most of us have similar backgrounds so agree on the same. Since having my blog I know understand how important this tool is it enables in a safe and friendly way to find different views from people all over the world who are from diverse backgrounds who may have more experience and knowledge than me, I find this exciting so I am able to be open minded to my learning allowing students to gain the best possible experience of dance from me.       

Twitter is the next tool I want to get familiar with and use for my dance school to help further develop my networking and marketing my dance school.

People use networking for all different reasons to save time, research quicker and promote themselves or a business to keep up to date with the latest information, meet new people to engage in conversation with others share ideas or research. The web is a huge tool if you know how you can gain and learn from other professionals my only question is can you trust who they say they are.

I would like to see one page with all information that is customised for my needs for example diary, blog, facebook, my web site, emails, BBO (the British Ballet Organization) , online banking to name a few, that require only one log in to get started which with my hectic lifestyle would save me time. Not sure how or if this is available but it’s something that I will be looking into, in the near future.    

When at the School I am unable due to blocked sites use facebook, my blog, twitter, my web site  which makes my life quite difficult working there all day and then to my dance school in the evenings I would have to use and carry 2 different lap tops all day with me I want to know if there is an app or someway to combine all of this together which would allow me to use facebook answer emails use twitter and blog at any point during the day this is something I need to look into which would make my life a whole lot easier.